Bedtime Stories

by Johnson, Jean

  Clutching his shoulders, Leo caressed his skin, then pushed him down. He murmured a protest, clinging to her with his free arm and lips, his right hand still occupied with a very skillful exploration of her flesh. Still, she persisted until he was lying on his back again, though it meant she half-straddled him in his wordless, insistent demand to keep her close.

  A few moments later found him pressing her onto her back, when all she did was shift so they could continue their kiss. Complying, Leo groaned; his suckling kisses wandered from her mouth to her throat, turning into teasing nips. The controlled scrape of his teeth was undeniably erotic, but also a little alarming. She gasped, startled, when he bit and suckled at the same time, accompanying the act with a deep growl.

  “Easy!” she hissed, alarmed by his increasingly feral touch. He released her flesh with a wet pop, peering up at her. She smiled wryly at him. “Hey. I thought this was supposed to be the tale of Sleeping Beauty, not Beauty and the Beast.”

  He grinned and licked her breast. “We can always explore that one later . . . but you’re right. Ours is definitely a Sleeping Beauty story.”

  “Good. Now . . . having rescued the handsome, slumbering prince,” Leo purred, coaxing him higher on her body with a gentle caress of her finger under his jaw, “I would like to claim my reward.”

  Shifting a little higher, settling between her thighs as she parted them, Shen braced his elbows on the bed to either side. “Anything I have is now yours.”

  “Good.” She smiled. “I want it all.” To make sure he got at least some of her point, she shifted her hips, lifting her knees so she could tip her pelvis into his.

  His brown eyes darkened and he flexed his own hips, sliding his shaft against her damp flesh. “All of me?”

  She shuddered, enjoying his firm, gliding touch. “All of you.”

  Shen stilled. Despite the now dim glow from the tail end of sunset outside, she could see the teasing look in his eyes fade, replaced by something much more serious.

  “Is that . . . a proposal?” he asked.

  Leo stilled as well, holding her breath as she thought about it. Thought about him. Shen. A man who looked twice her age and had lived five times it, though not as freely as she had. A man who was bright, caring, and completely one of a kind. Her kind.

  She didn’t stop the smile that spread her lips. “Shen Codah, will you marry me?”

  Emotion gleamed in his eyes. Cupping her head, Shen captured her mouth; he devoured her with a deep kiss, his hips moving in time with his tongue, rubbing himself sensually against her.

  Enjoying the gliding tease of his erection, it didn’t take long for her to grow impatient for more. Squirming a little, she reached between them, capturing his shaft with her hand. He groaned into her mouth, then shifted, helping her find the right angle to prod him into her depths. That made both of them groan, and he bucked a little, sinking deeper.

  Leo sucked in another breath at the sting of being stretched; it had been a while since her last lover. But it was the pain on her new lover’s face that concerned her. The lines deepened on Shen’s brow as he grimaced, making her wonder if this attempt at intimacy was too soon in his recovery. Teeth bared, he pushed a little deeper, muscles straining in what looked like an internal war between forging forward and holding back.

  “I . . . I can’t . . .” His abdomen spasmed, followed by the rest of his body. Driving deep, he nipped and licked at her mouth, her throat, her shoulder, sucking strongly on the skin at the base of her neck. He took her roughly, fiercely, claiming everything she had just given him, rocking the bed until the canopy fringe swayed.

  For a moment, it seemed inevitable that he would leave her behind, his passion had boiled over so fast, so furiously. Leo didn’t care; even without those half-lost rejuvenation medicines, the physicians who had examined him after his rescue had promised both of them that he still had a good sixty or more years left to live. He could make it up to her another time; right now, she just wanted to give him as much pleasure as he could stand, because he deserved it. Reopening her transceivers, Leo caressed him electrokinetically.

  Tearing his mouth from her throat, Shen gasped. “Stars! Oh, yes—let me in!”

  Guessing what he meant, she pulled down her inner walls, the part of her that guarded her against intrusion, whether from a random electromagnetic fluctuation or from another soul with Psian genetic engineering in his veins. To Shen, she opened herself up—and bucked herself as raw sensation flooded her nerves.

  For a moment, he and she were one; his lust, his passion, his love were now hers. She was him, hard and aching, driving into soft, clinging heat over and over again. He was her, wet with acceptance, clenching around him with need. Passion crested, climaxed, crescendoed in an actual, physical spark between their bodies, flaring blue white in the indigo darkness of the bedroom. If that spark sizzled, neither of them heard; her cries mixed too strongly with his groans, accompanied by the wooden creaking of the old-fashioned, canopy-draped bed.

  He didn’t collapse on her, so much as slump slowly by degrees. Clinging to him, her own mouth nibbling on his throat, Leo accepted his weight. Without all the cumbersome metallic implants, he wasn’t as heavy as when she had rescued him. He was solid, pinning her to their new bed as surely as if she were still bound by his virtual programming, but not a burden. Of any kind.

  For a moment, she let memory color her perceptions in electrokinetic detail, conjuring up a virtual replica of that room in Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Shen grunted and shook his head, dispelling the shared vision.

  “No,” he ordered gruffly, lifting some of his weight back onto one elbow. “No more dreams. No more programs. I want nothing but reality with you.”

  Sighing, Leo nodded. “All right . . . but that does mean actually getting up and trying to find something suitable with which to tie me to the bed.”

  Shen groaned, dropping his forehead to hers. Physically, he was still soft with satisfaction, but she could feel the mental undercurrents of his reaction to her suggestion. They were still linked electrokinetically, still sharing their arousal, and more. Reaching up and out with her mind, since her arms were occupied in the important task of holding him, she sparked the bedside lamp to life.

  The sideways glow highlighted the silver strands at his temple and the wrinkles at the corner of his eye. Leo shifted her left hand from the sweat-damp skin of his back. Cupping his cheek, she guided his mouth down to hers for a gentle, loving kiss. She didn’t quite invoke true virtuality between them, but she did link and share her pleasure. Shen accepted it, as he accepted her into the inner sanctum of his mind . . .

  A long while later, Leo woke from a vivid, disjointed dream of roving hands and roaming lips to find it wasn’t a dream. Her lover was caressing her, kissing her in the dim gray light of dawn. Smiling sleepily, she wrapped her arms around him and returned the favor, tangling her tongue happily with his.

  It didn’t actually matter which one of them was the other’s Prince or Princess Charming. It only mattered that they were both awake.

  Beauty and the Beast

  Author’s Note: When we were discussing a list of stories for this anthology, my editor requested that I write a version of this particular one, as it happens to be her favorite fairy tale. Since a lot of these stories have been popularized by various movie and television production companies—along with a particularly fine novelization by fellow author Robin McKinley—I worked hard to find a new twist of my own. In the end, I decided to take it completely out of the fantasy genre and tuck it into science fiction. Cindy, this tale is dedicated to you.

  HAND snapping up and out with the same speed he would have used to break a neck or crush a skull, Viktor snagged the rose being thrown his way. The only damage he did to its stem, however, was a slight nick from one of his claws. There were other flowers he could have plucked, for there were literally hundreds being tossed his way—enough to make more than one of his fellow Haguaro sneeze from their thick floral
scents—but roses were special to him.

  Roses were his link to his humanity.

  Lifting the bloom to his muzzle, he inhaled deeply, savoring its sweet, rich perfume. Except, there was more to the smell of this rose than mere perfume. Something wafted up from the flower in his hand. Something that pricked at all of his senses, fluffing the fur along his neck and arms. Something that made his tail want to lash, something that made his ears flick up and strain, despite the tumult of noise from the cheering crowd tossing yet more flowers around him.

  Burying his muzzle against the deep pink flower, he sniffed his way first along the petals, then down to the stem. There lay the strongest traces of that mysterious scent, down where its former owner’s fingers had cut the bloom from its bush, snapped off its thorns, and handled it for untold minutes while waiting for this parade before tossing it into his hand.

  A feminine hand had wielded this bloom, but not just a feminine one. Something more basic than that. So basic, it struck his senses like a blunt weapon.

  Female.

  One moment, he was seated sedately among his fellow Haguaro Gengin on the parade float, accepting their accolades once again as the saviors of the small, enemy-beset nation of Sullipin. The next, he launched instinctively into the crowd. The Normals scattered, startled by his sudden movement; men, women, and children, they shrank back with wide, wary eyes. Not fearful, thankfully, just startled, but Viktor couldn’t think about that. He couldn’t think about anything, but stretched up on his hind legs, sniffing the upper currents of air and trying to calculate the point in the capital city’s parade route from which the flower in his grip had been tossed.

  There! Dodging around a knot of staring men, he approached the spot he had matched up in his memory with the trajectory of his rose. It had to be one of the five or six women edging back from him, all but leaning against the plexi windows of a bakery. The warm, yeasty scent of freshly baked bread and spicy-sweet sticky buns couldn’t mask the scent of her, however.

  Her. That heady scent of pure, intoxicating female came from her. Viktor stalked toward her, sniffing the air to be absolutely sure. The smell of her was too important to pick the wrong woman; he had to be sure the redhead with the wide blue green eyes was his rightful—

  A body interposed itself between him and his . . . well, she wasn’t his prey, per se, but she was his, somehow. The blocking figure was an older man, his dark hair salted heavily with iron gray. He smelled somewhat like her, some sort of relative, but he also smelled of a mix of courage and fear. The scent of a confrontation.

  “What . . . what do you want?�� the man demanded, lifting his chin a little.

  Lifting up again on his hind legs, towering over the older man, Viktor sniffed at the air around the redheaded woman. It was definitely the redhead, no mistake. He pointed at her, his hand still holding her flower. “Her.”

  The gray-haired man spluttered. “My . . . my daughter? Well . . . you can’t have her! We’re free citizens! We haven’t done anything wrong!”

  A hand touched his arm. Viktor glanced at its owner. Keisia Blood-thunder blinked her cat green eyes at him and murmured, “Viktor, what are you doing?” Her ears flicked down and back, and she snuck a look at the other Normals around them. “Why have you stopped the parade? What have they done?”

  The slight breeze wafting through the city shifted, bringing his fellow Haguaro’s scent to his nose. It didn’t completely diminish her smell, but it did reduce some of its impact on his instincts. Enough that Viktor felt embarrassed by his wildly impulsive actions. “Nothing . . . they’ve done nothing.”

  “Come back to the float,” Keisia murmured, patting his arm. “Let the Normals see how nice we are.”

  He knew she was right, but he couldn’t quite leave things at that. Turning his attention back to her, he lifted his chin a little. “What is your name?”

  The man between them lifted his own chin. “I am Godo Chavell, and this is my daughter, Raisa. What do you want with her?”

  Raisa . . . how appropriate. Briefly satisfied with that much information about her—which would hopefully be enough—Viktor lifted the flower again. “Thank you for the rose, Raisa. It is . . . very beautiful.”

  She smiled tentatively at him, making his chest swell at the sight. She had a beautiful smile, with a hint of a dimple on one side. Remembering his manners, Viktor bowed to both of them and turned away, following Keisia back to the float. Leaping back up onto the flower-piled transport, he ignored the curious looks from the other Gengins, focusing instead upon the flower still caught in his hand.

  Raisa Chavell. Raisa. Ancient Russian for “rose” . . .

  My Rose.

  “WHAT do you mean, you want this Raisa Chavell?” Cameron, the defense liaison, demanded. The Normal man gave Viktor a look that, if he had been an Haguaro himself, would have included downturned whiskers and flattened ears. “We don’t do slavery in Sullipin!”

  “Not like that,” Viktor growled, though he wasn’t particularly mad. Disgusted, more like it. He could not get her scent out of his head, but he was a civilized man, despite his genetically engineered shape. “I want to know who she is, where she’s from, what she does for a living, who her friends and family are. I want to meet with her, and I want to talk with her.”

  “This is highly irregular!” the defense liaison protested.

  “Our contract with your government is that for each time we risk our lives in defending this nation, we get to make a request for a special item or privilege commensurate to our efforts on your behalf,” Viktor reminded him. “We are on call every hour of every day, in exchange for food, living quarters, medical treatment, and a modest stipend. But when we actually risk our lives—as I clearly did this last week—we can ask for something more. I am asking for information about the redheaded woman, Raisa Chavell, and for the chance to talk with her. To start with . . . since this is such a little thing, compared to risking my life on behalf of all of yours.”

  “She is a free citizen of Sullipin!” Cameron protested.

  “And I am a civilized man, not a monster, as you seem to be implying,” Viktor pointed out, doing his best not to growl this time. He couldn’t keep the tip of his tail from twitching, though he did restrain it from fully thrashing. “I want her background investigated and a report sent to my quarters by this time tomorrow. To start with. More meetings might follow, but they’ll be with her cooperation and consent. End of discussion.”

  The other Haguaro in the debriefing room eyed him askance. Viktor didn’t care. He wanted to know more about her, and to smell more of that intoxicating, bone-deep scent.

  The Haguaro were the Sullipins’ primary weapon against their enemies. Civil war had devastated the backwater colonyworld of Pinnia three hundred years ago, fragmenting their original government into five factions. Sullipin didn’t have the one remaining, functional spaceport; that belonged to the nation of Arapin, up at the northern end of the small continent. Between them lay the jungles of Kessepin, where exotic and transplanted foods and medicines were grown. Danispin had the fruitful plains to the west, with grains and herds and farms, while Hallapin had various petroleum deposits to the south.

  Sullipin had all the mineral resources of the Pinnit Mountains, which the other four factions were in dire need of, and the shelter of the Sullivan Rift, a broad valley near the heart of those mountains, suitable for farming and living. With technology heavily reduced by centuries of war, and lacking the resources to build forms of airpower strong enough to assault the mountain kingdom the easy way, the militaries of Danispin, Hallapin, and Kessepin did their land-bound best to raid the outer mines of Sullipin whenever they thought they had a chance, rather than constantly pay the Sullipins in a more civilized way for the value of the ores and jewels.

  Up until the arrival of the Haguaro, they often succeeded. The crash landing of the original Gengins’ ship, stolen in their escape from the genetics lab that had created them, had occurred in the southern Pi
nnit Mountains. A trio of brave miners had treated the survivors of that crash like human beings rather than like monsters, and the survivors had allied themselves with the local government in gratitude.

  Bred and trained for speed, strength, tracking, and hand-to-hand combat, the Haguaro Gengins were warriors above and beyond anything this planet knew. For five generations, the Haguaro had defended Sullipin, and the Sullipins had honored them as its heroes.

  Is it really so damned much for me to ask for information about a damned Normal female? Viktor thought, tail flicking restlessly. I am a man! I am human, just like they are. With the same needs and wants and interest in my fellow human beings.

  He could feel Keisia eyeing him and knew she was concerned about his interest in a Normal woman. They had grown up in the same crèche group, had trained in many of the same combat forms, and had similar tastes in entertainment, humor, and favorite foods. The elders who oversaw the breeding lines had even made gentle suggestions that the two of them should consider forming a breeding pair, since they weren’t too closely related and did seem to get along so well. Before the parade, Viktor had considered those suggestions as a future possibility. A distant future possibility, but one nonetheless.

  Now all he could think about was her. Those blue green eyes with their round pupils instead of cat-slit ones. That faint dusting of freckles on her creamy cheeks instead of a stippling of dark whisker-spots. The sun-streaked copper and cream curls she bore, rather than a fluffy mane of golden and dark brown fur.

  Her scent spoke strongly, compellingly, undeniably of home to him. Of home, of woman, of something more. Something which he hadn’t had time to puzzle out just yet, other than that it was important. Something which he couldn’t dismiss from his thoughts. Why a Normal would make him react this way, he didn’t know, but she did.